#ripuels

Alistair, with his calm demeanor, had always been quite easily trodden over by humans. His scores in subservience and passiveness were what made him him, but only served to mark him more likely to cave to aggressive demands.

And aggressive women.

“Madam, I must insist that you return to your quarters. You are still recovering from surgery, and it is best for you to--”

“Do I look like I’m made of glass?” Ripley’s voice has become uncommonly low, almost threatening. “I demand to see him. I demand it. I’ve…” she paused, breathing erratic and panicked. “I just want to see him. Please.”

And then Alistair made the mistake of catching his eye over Amanda Ripley’s shoulder. She spun around, tracked his gaze, and promptly landed him right in the middle of her intense -- relieved -- stare. If androids had a concept of feeling naked, Samuels was sure he’d feel absolutely bare before her golden hazel eyes. Ripley made no move to approach him. In fact (and Christopher rather appreciated the idea) she seemed like she’d forgotten the station’s medical wing entirely, completely lost in his own gaze.

Or, at least he would like to think.

Eventually Alistair quit flicking his eyes between them and took his cue to leave, shoving some forms into Ripley’s frozen fingers.

“If you have any questions or concerns, please visit me at the front desk. Or, better yet,” he stepped backwards towards his desk. “Buzz a nurse from your room.” From there, the frazzled android took his leave.

Amanda Ripley, Queen of Scathing Retorts (in his own mind), did not even blink in the retreating synthetic’s direction. In fact, she was on her toes, stepping closer and closer and closer, until there was barely three feet between them.

“Samuels?” She clutched the stack of forms to her chest. Unsure, hesitant. Doubting. Hoping. Afraid.

“Ripley,” he answered, and his voice was as it ever was. Identical to Alistair’s, to the other Samuels unit named George who stood as a nurse in the trauma ward (no doubt one of the first faces she’d seen.) His tone was warm as a synthetic voicebox could be, measured perfectly for the occasion and person he spoke to. Words always chosen quickly and carefully, treading lightly over fragile human sensibilities. Technically, she should not have been able to tell it was him.

But, by God, this was a Ripley.

So the sound of her name off his lips made her shed tears so suddenly as if someone had turned a faucet. It caused her to shake on her two badly damaged legs, nearly knocking herself over. Before she could fall, however, he reacted. He caught her in his arms while the forms flew and her crutches clattered to the ground.

“Oh God, is it really… you?” Still the slightest bit of doubt, of fear.

“Thanks to you, yes.” And Christopher knew he could thank her until he outlived her, and still never be able to thank her enough. “Your swift power-plug pulling is to blame for my continued existence. As well as dragging me behind you every step of the way until my reboot was complete.” There was far too much distance between them, which he aimed to close shortly.

Ripley had not blinked in a while. That small detail concerned him greatly. Ah, there it was. She inhaled deeply and whispered, “I’m not… not the only one? The only one who made it?”

He shifted her up a bit, then hoisted her up completely in his arms (bridal style, he recalled before shoving the memory brutally back into the darkest recesses of his computer brain.) Thinking like that would summon numerous preventative programs and warning pop-ups. Getting out of one “post-mission debrief” also known as a wipe was one thing; being summoned for another would be the end as he knew it.

As this Christopher knew it.

This Chris was finding the idea of falling in love with Amanda Ripley more and more favorable the longer he held her in his--

Immediately, an error box flashed across his HUD and a bit of coding forced his arms to release Ripley onto the floor ever so gently, only lingering on her waist long enough to regain her own balance. Disappointment flashed through her eyes, gone as soon as it had appeared. Fleeting like a spark through a cable.

“Samuels… Christoper…”

Instead of giving in to anything going on in those viciously traitorous subroutines, and ignoring the longing in his friend’s (just a friend?) face, he began leading her back through the medical wing of this station. Back to her hospital room. Back to where she belonged.

And then he would continue onward to make his reports, and be shipped off to his long-abandoned desk in a large space-station in a large sector of this galaxy, one in hundreds of thousands of Samuelses.

Shipped off, leaving behind the first person, the first human, to acknowledge him.

Christopher truly felt he could kiss this woman.

But an idea is just an idea, and no android ought to be having any of those.